timmmay: Six year old CPU. They have broken WiFi antennas. I'd skip it, a R Pi would do a better job and cheaper.

I have tried out a Raspberry Pi and yes, you can get a nice result, but they can be daunting if you're new to Linux. I wasn't a total Linux noob and I still didn't find it very user friendly.

The thing you're looking at would be an inexpensive way of trying out the HTPC concept, while still maintaining the flexibility of an HTPC over other media boxes. But it will have limitations. Don't forget to include the price of a wireless keyboard/mouse combo in your budget.

For this price I got the Gigabyte BRIX from Amazon. Added 4GB RAM and 128GB nmSATA SSD for a total of about $320. It comes with both ethernet 1Gbps and 802.11a/b/g/n. And modern CPU including an Intel HD5000 GPU.

You sitll need a network tuner such as the HDHomeRun for either chioce.

I'd probably go freitasm's solution over a raspberry pi. A pi might deal with streaming video via xbmc but it's hard to get broadcast video running in to it, and personally I found a bit sluggish. But for the price point they're very capable.

With the brio, you could run a real browser for these sites that don't have an xbmc channel etc.